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Still More Writing Samples

After Tuesday's post, a few readers emailed me to say that the Solicitor General's website is a good source of writing samples. Begin your review here. You'll see there is a way to view the briefs by subject matter, which will help you to avoid those briefs that are too dry for your own personal taste.

I also heard about this resource from Mike Cernovich of Crime & Federalism, who recommended it in a comment to an earlier post:

If you want to see great legal writing, just go to the U.S. Solicitor General's website and start reading. It doesn't get much better than Seth Waxman, Ken Starr, and Ted Olson. It's fun to read their briefs, as they all have unique writing styles. I also suggest reading anything by Miguel Estrada, formerly with OSG and now a partner at a large law firm. When I had unfetted Westlaw access in law school, I'd go to CTA-BRIEFS or SCT-BRIEFS and read everything by Estrada. Also, go to appellate.net and read some of the briefs by partners at Mayer. Whenever I'm writing a brief in an unfamiliar jurisdiction and want to get a "feel" for how things are done, I see whether the lawyers at Mayer filed in a brief in that jurisdiction.

Comments

Evan: Thanks for the link. By the way, I read both of the briefs you wrote and posted. I thought they excellent. Did the lawyers who hid the evidence face any discipline? Even putting aside that you had to make the conduct look as bad as possible in your brief, it still seemed like their conduct was egregious.

Mike: Thanks. In writing the briefs, I faced a few difficulties I should have mentioned when I posted about them originally: (a) It's practically impossible to get a new trial in Missouri for the reasons we were putting forward in our argument, so we faced an uphill battle and (b) although we were aided in this effort by the egregiousness of what had transpired, it had to be set out very plainly so that I didn't lose the judges by engaging in overstatement.

As for my opposing lawyers, they were absolved by the court's opinion, which included this line: "There are no facts to support a finding of misconduct of counsel."